Criticism of religion is criticism of the concepts, doctrines, validity, and/or practices ofreligion, including associated political and social

implications.[1][page needed] Religious criticism has a long history. It goes at least as far back as the 5th century BCE inancient Greece with Diagoras "the atheist" of Melos, and the 1st century BCE in ancient Rome with Titus Lucretius Carus' De Rerum Natura. It continues to the present day with the advent of New Atheism, represented by authors and journalists such as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor J. Stenger, and the late Christopher Hitchens. Alternatively, "religious criticism" has been used by the literary critic Harold Bloom to describe a mode of religious discussion that is secular but not inherently anti-religion. Criticism of religion is complicated by the fact that there exist multiple definitions and concepts of religion in different cultures and languages. With the existence of diverse categories of religion such asmonotheism, polytheism, pantheism, nontheism and diverse specific religions such asChristianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and many others; it is not always clear to whom the criticisms are aimed at or to what extent they are applicable to other religions. Critics often consider religion to be outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful to society, an impediment to the progress of science, encouraging of immoral acts or customs, and a political tool of social control.

Marx actually said very little about religion directly; in all of his writings, he hardly ever addresses religion in a systematic fashion, even though he touches on it frequently in books, speeches and pamphlets.The reason is that his critique of religion forms simply one piece of his overall theory of society thus, understanding his critique of religion requires some understanding of his critique of society in general. According to Marx, religion is an expression of material realities and economic injustice. Thus, problems in religion are ultimately problems in society. Religion is not the disease, but merely a symptom. It is used by oppressors to

make people feel better about the distress they experience due to being poor and exploited. This is the origin of his comment that religion is the opium of the masses but as shall see, his thoughts are much more complex than commonly portrayed.

According to Karl Marx, religion is a tool utilized by the ruling classes whereby the masses can shortly relieve their suffering via the act of experiencing religious emotions. It is in the interest of the ruling classes to instill in the masses the religious conviction that their current suffering will lead to eventual happiness. Therefore as long as the public believes in religion, they will not attempt to make any genuine effort to understand and overcome the real source of their suffering, which in Marx's opinion was theircapitalist economic system. In this perspective, Marx saw religion as escapism.[35] Marx also viewed the Christian doctrine of original sin as being deeply antisocial in character. Original sin, he argued, convinces people that the source of their misery lies in the inherent and unchangeable "sinfulness" of humanity rather than in the forms of social organization and institutions, which, Marx argued, can be changed through the application of collective social planning.[36]

Freud and religion

Sigmund Freud (18561939) deals with the origins and nature of religious belief in several of his books and essays. Freud regards God as an illusion, based on the infantile need for a powerful father figure; religion, necessary to help us restrain violent impulses earlier in the development of civilization, can now be set aside in favor of reason and science

The Future of an Illusion In The Future of an Illusion (1927)[7] Freud refers to religion as an illusion which is "perhaps the most important item in the psychical inventory of a

civilization". In his estimation, religion provides for defense against "the crushingly superior force of nature" and "the urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt". [8] He concludes that all religious beliefs are "illusions and insusceptible of proof."[9] Freud then examines the issue of whether, without religion, people will feel "exempt from all obligation to obey the precepts of civilization".[10] He notes that "civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers" in whom secular motives for morality replace religious ones; but he acknowledges the existence of "the great mass of the uneducated and oppressed" who may commit murder if not told that God forbids it, and who must be "held down most severely" unless "the relationship between civilization and religion" undergoes "a fundamental revision".[11] Freud asserts that dogmatic religious training contributes to a weakness of intellect by foreclosing lines of inquiry.[12] He argues that "[I]n the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable."[13][14] The book expressed Freud's "hope that in the future science will go beyond religion, and reason will replace faith in God."[15] In an afterword to An Autobiographical Study (1925, revised 1935), Freud states that his "essentially negative" view of religion changed somewhat after The Future of an Illusion; while religion's "power lies in the truth which it contains, I showed that that truth was not a material but a historical truth."[16] Harold Bloom calls The Future of an Illusion, "one of the great failures of religious criticism." Bloom believes that Freud underestimated religion, and that as a result his criticisms of it were no more convincing that T. S. Eliot's criticisms of psychoanalysis. Bloom suggests that psychoanalysis and Christianity are both interpretations of the world and of human nature, and that while Freud believed that religious beliefs are illusions and delusions, the same may be said of psychoanalytic theory. In his view nothing is accomplished with regard to either Christianity or psychoanalysis by listing their illusions and delusions. The Essence of Christianity (German: Das Wesen des Christentums) is a book by Ludwig Feuerbach first published in 1841. It explains Feuerbach's philosophy and critique of religion

Feuerbach's theme was a derivation of Hegel's speculative theology in which the Creation remains a part of the Creator, while the Creator remains greater than the Creation. When the student Feuerbach presented his own theory to professor Hegel, Hegel refused to reply positively to it. In Part I of his book, Feuerbach developed what he calls the "true or anthropological essence of religion." Treating of God in his various aspects "as a being of the understanding," "as a moral being or law," "as love" and so on. Feuerbach talks of how man is equally a conscious being, more so than God because man has placed upon God the ability of understanding. Man contemplates many things and in doing so he becomes acquainted with himself. Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God corresponds to some feature or need of human nature. "If man is to find contentment in God," he claims, "he must find himself in God." Thus God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of man's inward nature. This projection is dubbed as a chimera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence. Feuerbach states that, "a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God", and continues to say that qualities are not suddenly denoted as divine because of their godly association. The qualities themselves are divine therefore making God divine, indicating that man is capable of understanding and applying meanings of divinity to religion and not that religion makes a man divine. The force of this attraction to religion though, giving divinity to a figure like God, is explained by Feuerbach as God is a being that acts throughout man in all forms. God, "is the principle of [man's] salvation, of [man's] good dispositions and actions, consequently [man's] own good principle and nature". It appeals to man to give qualities to the idol of their religion because without these qualities a figure such as God would become merely an object, its importance would become obsolete, there would no longer be a feeling of an existence for God. Therefore, Feuerbach says, when man removes all qualities from God, "God is no longer anything more to him than a negative being". Additionally, because man is imaginative, God is given traits and there holds the appeal. God is a part of man through the invention of a God. Equally though, man is repulsed by God because, "God alone is the being who acts of himself". In part 2 he discusses the "false or theological essence of religion," i.e. the view which regards God as having a separate existence over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs, such as the belief in revelation which

he believes not only injures the moral sense, but also "poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth," and the belief in sacraments such as the Lord's Supper, which is to him a piece of religious materialism of which "the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality." Part 2 comes to a crux though by seemingly retracting previous statements. Feuerbach claims that God's only action is, the moral and eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself, because man's actions are placed upon God. Feuerbach also contradicts himself by claiming that man gives up his personality and places it upon God who in turn is a selfish being. This selfishness turns onto man and projects man to be wicked and corrupt, that they are, incapable of good, and it is only God that is good, the Good Being. In this way Feuerbach detracts from many of his earlier assertions while showing the alienation that takes place in man by worshipping God. Feuerbach affirms that goodness is, personified as God, turning God into an object because if God was anything but an object nothing would need to be personified on him. The aspect of objects having previously been discussed; in that man contemplates objects and that objects themselves give conception of what externalizes man. Therefore if God is good so then should be man because God is merely an externalization of man because God is an object. However religion would show that man is inherently corrupt. Feuerbach tries to lessen his inconsistency by asking if it were possible if, I could perceive the beauty of a fine picture if my mind were aesthetically an absolute piece of perversion? Through Feuerbachs reasoning it would not be possible, but it is possible, and he later states that man is capable of finding beauty. A caustic criticism of Feuerbach was delivered in 1844 by Max Stirner. In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and Its Own) he attacked Feuerbach as inconsistent in his atheism. The pertinent portions of the books, Feuerbach's reply, and Stirner's counter-reply form an instructive polemics.

In elucidating a sociology of knowledge, Durkheim uses the history of religions to show how religions mirrored the way society was structured. For example, classificatory schemas for social groups were based on tribal differences. Tribes were divided into two phratries, which were further subdivided into various clans (p. 105-107). These divisions were based around the various totems that were represented by the phratries and clans. Durkheim proposes

that these divisions formed the basis of how humans learned to classify their environment into different categories (p. 238). He notices that there is nothing objective in the observable world that forces us to group things with each other. Everything in our experience is disparate and discontinuous. Nowhere in reality do we observe beings that merge their natures and change into one another. It is only the religious practice of grouping various totem clans together that allowed us to start grouping other things in our environment. Thus, as Durkheim explains, the realities to which religious speculation was applied then are the same ones that would later serve as objects of scientists reflection. Those realities are nature, man and society. Both attempt to connect things to one another, establish internal relations between those things, classify them, and systematize them (p. 431). In this way, Durkheim attempts to show that religion forms the epistemological basis for human experience. But Durkheim goes further. He is not content to make religion the epistemological basis for contemporary society. He seeks to radically invert this conception of the relation of religion and society, making not religion the origin of society, as he has just proposed, but in fact making society the origin of religion! In this way he follows Marx in making religion a reflection of society. However, while Marx sees god as an idealization of human nature, Durkheim sees god as society itself, in several respects. He constructs functional characteristics of god and bridges these to society. For example, he says that god is first of all a being that man conceives of as superior to himself in some respects and one on whom he believes he depends. Society also fosters in us the sense of perpetual dependence. Society requires us to make ourselves its servants, forgetful of our own interests Weber, the last of the three writers, like Durkheim, invested significant time in the study of religion. Also similar to Durkheim, Weber sees a great deal of contemporary society rooted in the processes of religion. However, like Marx, Weber sees the driving force of history as material interests and not ideas, as found in religious beliefs. So in tying religion to the spread of capitalism, as he does in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he attempts to show that the ideas (Webers classic switchman metaphor) behind the religious beliefs of Calvinists steer the direction of the forces that were already in motion. The combination of technologies that facilitated capitalism and the ascetic habits of the Calvinists allowed capitalism to flourish in Europe and spread to the Americas